Hello Reddit,
I’m a 20-year-old straight white guy, and I find myself struggling with some beliefs that I know are strongly affecting my happiness. I genuinely think that every identity group beyond my own is somehow inferior, and I’ve bought into Manosphere values similar to those espoused by Andrew Tate, believing that most women are genetically predisposed to be more submissive than men. I view abortion as murder, hold the belief that trans women aren’t women and shouldn’t be referred to as she/her, and I see immigrants as dangerous, justifying Trump’s border control in my mind. I also think that neoliberalism and capitalism are great systems.
This mindset is making me really miserable. Deep down, I want to have a girlfriend and see her as an equal partner, someone I can love, respect, and appreciate for her intelligence and ambition. I want to treat trans women as women and develop genuine empathy for immigrants. I aspire to lean more left in my views, but I struggle to find the right arguments, and it feels incredibly hard to let go of these ingrained beliefs.
The problem is that all my friends are right-wing, and my family is extremely conservative, which leaves me feeling isolated with no one to turn to except the internet. I often find myself doomscrolling through self-help podcasts aimed at men, and I even identify with characters like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. I realize that I’m wrong in many ways because the world is always more complex than the right-wing populist propaganda makes it seem, but I don’t know how to change.
So, I’m reaching out for book recommendations that could help me shift my perspective—anything thorough and complex about immigration, capitalism, feminism, or trans rights that could help me deradicalize. I would really appreciate any help. I thought about reading Judith Butler, but I only understood about half of what they were saying.
I believe that social science, feminism or critical theory is the best way to start. However, I am not sure where to begin, as I wanted to read communist literature, but Marx seems a bit overwhelming. Additionally, I haven’t read Hegel, which appears to be a prerequisite. I started reading Hannah Arendt’s texts on fascism, and this has really helped me a lot. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was also very helpful.
Thank you!
Comments
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Reading a bunch of high level theory isn’t as likely to change your worldview as effectively as personal conversations about more concrete ideas and experiences.
Starting short and basic, see if this helps. One could nitpick about individual assertions here but taken as a whole the list is worth thinking about: https://www.coloursofresistance.org/729/the-male-privilege-checklistan-unabashed-imitation-of-an-article-by-peggy-mcintosh/
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I read “The Gender Knot” by Allan Johnson when I was about your age and I learned a lot from it. Reading stuff like that can help you understand some common experiences that women have, but it can also help to explain a lot about your experiences as a man that you may not have critically examined before.
You might also start to look into some of the scholarly work on masculinity. One of the big tragedies of the contemporary men’s movement is that (aside from being filled with grifters) sincere people in the movement are often not aware of what feminists say about gender or the separate but related study and theory of masculinity. You might take a look through Brannon’s model of masculinity as a starting point. You might even consider picking up the book referenced in the Wikipedia article. The irony is that as a man I feel there is a very real need for a men’s movement, but often those spaces feel toxic, ignorant, and fundamentally counterproductive. They have the energy of Valorie Solanas’ S.C.U.M manifesto, which is an absolutely wild read (and to be clear, not at all indicative of what the vast majority of feminists think).
For some race stuff, you can’t go wrong with DuBois, but I really enjoyed reading “Black Power” by Charles V. Hamilton and Kwame Ture for an inside look at the black power movement. For some theory, consider Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States.
When it comes to philosophical theory, I’d strongly suggest you start with secondary sources – basically, books that write about these theorists rather than the original works themselves. That way when you read the originals you’ll already have some idea of what they’re talking about and you benefit from the decades of scholarship that follow those people. Ideally if you want to pursue social theory you should go back and forth between the primary theory and the secondary writing. Hegel is indeed wildly influential, but he has been written about so often by so many people that there isn’t any reason to actually read Hegel until you decide to go to graduate school in something related.
Be sure to read everything with a critical eye. This probably goes without saying, but don’t expect women will like or relate to you just because you are familiar with some feminist theory. Women are not a monolith. Also, sounds like you might want to find some some friends who share your newfound interests. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your old friends, just maybe find some new spaces to hang out.
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You’re right that the main hurdle here is your social environment. Everyone around you is parroting the same talking points all the time, creating a “plausibility structure” where even points that don’t hold up to empirical scrutiny are treated as common sense truths above criticism. Peter Berger explores the concept is his book The Sacred Canopy ( https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/religion/Summary%2520of%2520Peter%2520Berger,%2520The%2520Sacred%2520Canopy.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiZl8Cb6LmMAxVn8MkDHeWZCCIQFnoECD0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0JfrFYpE5aI6W-k5gO_GY8 )The first step would be to find some new people to spend some time with. Once you can access an alternative plausibility structure it will be much easier to self-engineer your own belief system instead of swallowing your family’s ideology.
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Thomas Sowell is an excellent resource who has a lot of material on YouTube. He approaches social problems historically from a worldwide perspective. For example, on race and IQ he discusses 17th-century Scotland rather than recent American history.
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You need a more diverse friend group. You also need to engage with more diverse content. The internet is a great place to just…listen and learn. The fact that you’re having this internal debate is a great start. It shows that you aren’t just accepting what’s being spoon fed to you. You’re asking why. Never stop asking why.
I would check out Alok who is a trans comedian and creator and just has really poignant content around gender identity. The video I linked is a conversation between them and Drew Afualo about gender and race.
I will say that a lot of left leaning content can put you on the defensive because it’s coming from groups that have been hurt. It’s REALLY easy to feel attacked, as a straight white man, when listening to this content because the common enemy in these stories is…straight white men. That’s why having interpersonal conversations is going to be best because people who consider you a friend might have a kinder approach.
When looking up feminism texts — I recommending specifically looking up intersectional feminism which provides perspective from women of all racial backgrounds. https://femsociety.com/the-importance-of-intersectionality-in-feminism-today/
White Fragility is also a great book to help you start unpacking racial privilege which can help reframe your opinion on immigration — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566247/white-fragility-by-robin-diangelo/
Once you do some of that foundational reading, start chatting with people that are different from you platonically. Having female friends, poor friends, hispanic/latino friends, documented and undocumented friends, you’re invested in learning more because you care about em and want to protect them. Caring about people who are different from you just for the sake of caring about them is the first step to making you a better, compassionate person.
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Sensoy, O. & DiAngelo, R. (2017). 2nd Ed. Is Everybody Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press
Free Link from archive.org
Singh, A. A. (2019). The racial healing handbook: Practical activities to help you challenge privilege,
confront systemic racism & engage in collective healing.
Free Link
Paid link with free worksheets
Sue, D. (2003). Overcoming Our Racism: The Journey to Liberation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Free Link
You can find free PDFs of the books online (like the links I included), rent digital copies of them from your library or using Hoopla, or preferably actually buy them and support the authors.
Also please do work from Layla Saad’s book, Me and White Supremacy.
Free link: Free Link
Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow is also very important. Link: Free Link
Here’s a list of other books
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>feminism
bell hook’s “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”: This is where I’d start, particularly the chapter “Understanding Patriarchy”.
>immigration
John Washington’s “The Case for Open Borders”: This book breaks down the argument into the historical, economic, political, and environmental reasons we should advocate for open borders, and also includes a great discussion of the sources chapter-by-chapter so you can find more to read there.
>capitalism
I know you said Marx seems overwhelming, but I think Engels’ “The Principles of Communism” was written the year before the Communist Manifesto and is essentially an outline/rough draft for the much more famous document.
>trans rights
Man, I don’t know how to tell you to not hate trans people. They’re just people. Like, the same can be said about the first two topics as well, but at least there’s some sort of political, economic, etc argument to be had there.
But despite the conservative propaganda that says otherwise, trans people have always been around. If you need a historical example, you could read Bullough and Bullough’s 1993 book “Cross dressing, sex, and gender.” It’s woefully behind the times of course as it’s over 30 years old, but it is good for providing historical examples of trans people throughout different histories and cultures.
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Academic books are written from a really lofty perspective and oftentimes assume that the reader has some prerequisite knowledge or perspectives that dont get totally stated. Theyll help you understand but they wont make you care or empathize.
Instead, I strongly recommend books written from a minority perspective to better understand the inner worlds of the people around you. For example, “Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead (link) or “Small Great Things” by Jodi Picoult (link).
But honestly, the most effective solution would be for you to travel. Once you see the best and worst kinds of people around the world, you’ll notice really quickly how limiting and incorrect a lot of your racist beliefs will be. Also, there’s nothing like seeing the casual racism of other countries — stuff that you cant relate to because you didnt grow up with it — to make you see how ridiculous racism is.
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